Saturday, April 2, 2011

Chickens!

For my birthday this year we decided to get three little chickens! Andy picked two of them up on Wednesday, and I got the other one yesterday. Their names are Fifi, Gigi and Mimi (named after the birds of the Enchanted Tiki Room). They're adorable.

This is Mimi. She's a Rhode Island Red, and I think she's about a week or so older than the other two, so she's a little bigger and has more feathers. She will lay about 6 brown eggs/week in the summer, 3-4 in the winter. Sometimes she picks on the other two, but over all they get along very well.

This is Gigi. She's a Buff Orpington. She's going to be the biggest out of the three (about 8 pounds!). Orpingtons are sweet natured and good layers through the winter. We should get about 3-4 eggs/week from her year round. She's a little more mellow than Mimi and likes to sleep.

This girl is Fifi. She's an Ameracauna and she will lay about 5 blue or green eggs in the summer, and not many in the winter. It will be fun to have a colorful egg carton. I think she's going to be nice and brown, and have a beard. She's a pesky little thing, already jumping at the sides of the box and scratching the food out of the container. She'll make things interesting :)

Here's another cute picture of them lined up. I'm really glad they like each other (for the most part).

Here's the setup we have right now for their brooder. It stays at about 95 degrees.

We're working on building them a little portable coop for the back yard (see the garden ark). It should be a fun project. It will probably be 5 or 6 months before they start laying eggs, and I can't wait!

1 comment:

Very fun! We get eggs from some friends at church for $2 a dozen and I love them because it always feels like Easter, they all different colors and shapes and it makes me smile :-) Enjoy your farm fresh eggs this summer!